The American space agency's proposal to land a man on an asteroid is expected to be criticized
The Obama administration wants to send humans to Mars during the 30s of this century. It goes without saying that such a mission requires a lot of preliminary engineering development and therefore, as a first step, the American space agency (NASA) plans to send astronauts to a small asteroid that will be put into orbit around the moon ahead of time. To achieve this mechanical challenge, a solar-powered robotic spacecraft is currently being designed to capture a small space rock and slowly push it into the desired orbit. Although the intended asteroid has not yet been chosen and the robotic space tug has not yet been built, the parties involved hope that the rock will be brought close to the moon as early as 2021. NASA calls this idea the "Asteroid Orientation Mission" (ARM) and is now organizing resources from across the agency to make it possible.
Asteroids could serve as a springboard for human expansion into the solar system
Michelle Gates, head of the Asteroid Orientation Mission planning team, says the advanced propulsion technology that will be used to accomplish the mission and the crew activities that will be practiced during it will give NASA the capability and experience needed to one day send people to Mars. The asteroid mission will demonstrate rendezvous procedures in space and establish procedures for sample collection and movement of astronauts outside their spacecraft. And all of this will be done with the astronaut crew relatively safe, because if something goes wrong, Earth will be close enough to allow an emergency return.
However, ARM has many vocal critics. The US National Research Council, a very prestigious body, published a report in June 2014 that claimed that this mission would divert resources and divert attention from more valuable space missions and even indicated parts of the mission that would be useless for a trip to Mars. The harshest criticism came from asteroid researchers. Mark Sykes, head of the Planetary Research Institute in Tucson, Arizona, derided the mission when he testified before a congressional committee in September 2014, saying that NASA's estimated cost of the robotic spacecraft needed for the mission, at less than $1.25 billion, was unreliable. "The mission does not advance anything," says Sykes, "and anything that does benefit from it, could benefit much more through other, cheaper and more effective means."
On the other hand, Louis Friedman, a policy expert on space issues who was one of the people behind the idea of the asteroid targeting, believes that opponents of the mission do not understand that it gives the USA the best opportunity in the foreseeable future to maintain its leading position in the field of manned space missions.
In this context of manned missions, planetary researcher Richard Binzel of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) argues that NASA should conduct a comprehensive asteroid survey before jumping into the asteroid targeting project. According to him, such a survey would be able to discover asteroids that would be suitable for a manned mission even without being diverted to a new orbit. "While it would take us to drag a tiny piece of rock into orbit around the moon, we can discover more suitable and larger objects that orbit near the Earth and the moon and are easy to reach," Binzel says.
The Obama administration's next budget proposal is expected to require additional funding for the mission. But ARM's fate may actually have already been sealed by the 2014 congressional elections, in which Republicans, most of whom oppose the mission, won an absolute majority. This could be a blow to NASA's plans for manned space flights in the post-shuttle era. It is therefore possible that instead of boldly taking off for interstellar travel, the NASA astronauts will find themselves grounded to Earth for many years, regardless of how the agency finally chooses to reach the asteroid.
The article was published with the permission of Scientific American Israel
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It seems that the Obama administration has unnecessary money, as if a debt of 18,000,000,000,000 ($ trillion) is less than them, the previous economic crisis was caused by the private sector (the banks) - it started in America and affected many countries, but the next crisis will start as a series of small crises in the different countries that will prevent America B. From continuing to roll over the debt on those countries that purchased bonds, which will bring the American government to insolvency and an acute crisis
Many times more than the previous one or for a massive printing of dollars (like in Zimbabwe) which will lead to severe inflation and an equally severe economic crisis.
Every object has a gravitational force (yes, yes, you too)...or more precisely every two objects have a gravitational force. The magnitude of the force is determined by the product of their masses and how far apart they are. There is, of course, an exact equation, but it is not relevant.
Does an asteroid have gravity? If not, then how are you supposed to stay/walk on an asteroid?